Five Questions with Jason from Bleeding Green Nation

You can find my answers to his questions here. Bleeding Green was nice enough to answer some of my questions as well, found below. Sorry it drags so long, was not formatted because I don't know how to do that and I'm copying from email. I fix. Enjoy:

Hogs Haven: How would the season have to play out for Andy Reid to get fired? Keep his job? Let me get this out of the way: I want him fired bad, because I think he's an outstanding coach.

Bleeding Green Nation: I don't think anything whatsoever could happen to get him fired. To get him to quit? Who knows? Maybe... but I doubt that too. Frankly, I think the notion that a guy would step down as coach/VP of an NFL franchise and forfeit millions of dollars to stay home and "take care" of his 20 something year old kid. Jeff Lurie(Eagles owner) is a big fan of Andy's and frankly Andy has delivered him a lot of success. This team is just one year removed from a division title and a playoff win... I think there will be some hard questions asked of this organization after this year and there could be some shakeups, but I'd be pretty shocked if Andy Reid was one of them.

HH: I hate to stir up an issue I'm sure you and your readers have talked about ad nauseum, but are talks of Kevin Kolb replacing McNabb the real deal? Does that have traction this year?

BGN: Not this year. Basically playing Kevin Kolb this year doesn't help anyone. It certainly isn't going to make the team better and getting thrown to the wolves this early probably isn't going to help his development either. The Eagles know that and they've given no indication that they'd bring in Kolb. If anything, the next option at QB for this season would probably be AJ Feeley. That said, this year is about McNabb proving that he can get over the knee injury from last year. I think the Eagles and Andy Reid specifically are going to give him every opportunity to prove that he's getting healthier and can still get back to his old form. Something I've been reminding people(and myself quite often) is that he wasn't even supposed to be ready to start the year, and the doctors have said he won't even start to be close to 100% until at least a year removed from his surgery. Considering he was hurt last November, we're just now reaching that one year mark. So if he continues to move better, starts to pick up his game, and most importantly stays healthy this year... Then my guess is that he's back starting for this team in 2008.

Now, should McNabb end the year on IR once again this year... then all bets are off. I would imagine that would mean 2008 is the start of the Kevin Kolb era.

HH: LJ Smith has been injured a good bit and the passing offense appears to have suffered enormously as a result. The Eagles have just 9 passing touchdowns, but nearly half of those (4) came in one game against Detroit. How badly do you need LJ Smith healthy and productive?

BGN: There's no doubt that having a healthy LJ Smith would be nice... but I don't attribute the offensive struggles this year to him being injured. The struggles Donovan McNabb has had at times I think has had much more to do with it. Earlier in the year he was flat out not ready to play and just looked terrible(esp in weeks one and two), he's been inconsistent at other times... Certainly LJ Smith would be a nice weapon for when we get into the red zone, which has been a problem area for us, but a fully healthy and on form McNabb would be even better.

HH: The offensive line is giving up (source FO) sacks on 9.1% of passing plays, which is 28th in the league and well above the league average (6.4%). How much of the relative blame is on the offensive line vs. McNabb vs. the receivers not getting open?

BGN: I put a lot of the blame on Donovan McNabb. Aside from that Giants game, where the line just broke down completely, I think they've done a good job. McNabb has just been holding onto the ball too long. The problem is that the pre injury McNabb could hold onto the ball for an extra second because he was so good at moving around in the pocket and buying time for himself. Post injury McNabb hasn't realized that he can do that, at least not yet. I think we're seeing a guy trying to play himself back into shape rather than re-invent himself. There's probably been some times where WRs could have done a better job getting open, but that's still no excuse for taking bad sacks and it never stopped McNabb in the past. You either have to get out of the pocket in that situation or you throw the ball away.

HH: I hate the entire concept of "must-win" games, since they're all must win. But the Eagles are 3-5 and way behind in the East, with a lot of wild card contenders similarly well ahead of them. How badly do the Eagles need this game, and does a loss at FedEx field signal panic mode? (Are we facing a desperate team?)

BGN: Well, they certainly should be a desperate team but I think their real "must win" game was probably last week. That was their chance to get back to .500 and while this is still an important game it certainly doesn't have the same sizzle as it would if they'd won last week. I also don't think a loss here would send the team into panic mode, simply because I don't think Andy Reid has any discernible emotion. So, I'm not sure he's capable of "panic." Or "joy" for that matter. Were we to lose, he'd probably just say "We've got to do a better job out there." Of course, he may also say that if we win.

Basically, last week should have sent them into panic mode. Whether it did or not we probably won't know until kickoff.